Chuwit Kamolvisit is in the entertainment business. His customers used to be the men who like to buy commercial sex from something more like a glitzed-up megastore than a local market. Now his target is the nationwide audience. Like many successful entrepreneurs in the entertainment business, deep down inside he’s a showman. He knows how to work an audience. He reveals his information with all the tantalising skill of a stripper. He peels off an initial. He lets drop another voluptuously big sum of money. He gives us a naughty peek at a massage parlour bill.

He’s a master of the sound-bite: trays of Rolexes; plastic bags stuffed with money; mad dog. He knows how to make use of props: the blow-up charts made popular by MPs; the sticky tape over the mouth. He’s a master of the right backdrop: a hospital; the parliament; the Civil Service Commission. For his big day, he dons a luminous pink shirt that leaps out of every front page.

He’s selling a lot of newspapers. He’s raising the ratings on the evening news. We want to know what he’ll reveal next. We want to know if he’s still alive. This is one helluva show, folks. This is reality TV, Thai-style.

But think back a bit. Chuwit is giving us a masterly production. He’s an entertainment professional. But he’s using a very old story script. There’s nothing new. This is a repeat.

Just a few months ago, the police were making raids on illegal casinos. At one location, they were met by one of their own colleagues waving a pistol. He shouted something like “aren’t you guys ever satisfied, I’ve paid you too much already”. Then he threatened to shoot them. A few days later he gave a press conference under a sign announcing “I work for the good of the country”. He claimed to be performing a public service by detailing just how much illegal gambling dens paid to the police.

Three years ago, the Civil Service Commission published a national survey which showed people perceived the police to be the most corrupt agency (narrowly beating out MPs). For the total amount of bribes demanded, the police were just beaten into second place by the Land Department.

Around five years ago, a group of junior policemen burst into the ITV newsroom and insisted on revealing how their superiors forced them to collect bribes from truck drivers and pass them up the line. ITV left the cameras rolling. The policemen specified amounts and named names.

A little before that, a Chulalongkorn University team published a study of all the payments to the police from illegal gambling, sex services, drug dealing, and other illegal businesses. On the evening news, a senior police officer hurled the report across a room, shouting it was “not research”. The police started proceedings to sue the researchers for defamation in 22 police stations around Bangkok, but were eventually persuaded to cool down.

Back in 1996, a police general announced that the biggest gambling dens in Bangkok had been eclipsed by a much larger establishment run by the wife of a senior police officer in northern Bangkok. She had been an enthusiastic gambler herself, and had decided to move into the management side of the business. Delightfully, this den was called the Golden Pig, a popular symbol of prosperity, often represented as a chubby pig wallowing voluptuously in a slurry of golden coins. The den, the police general claimed, operated under full police protection right down to the guards at the gates.

And if we really want to go right back, everything was described in two academic studies about police training written in the early 1980s. The author of one of these was Purachai Piamsombun. It was called “Influence, interests and behaviour in the Thai police.” It’s all in there.

Ever since the earliest showings of this long-running drama, some features have become standard parts of the genre. The men in khaki come out with weary denials. But people in general show that they believe the stories of police corruption.

Some senior police figures argue that the problem is just a few bad officers in the force. But studies like those by Chulalongkorn University and by Purachai show that the problem is structural. The money flows are big and constant. Even many “good” officers accept money “with the current”. Much is used to provide junior officers with welfare, and to repair the police stations. Without it, the police would have real difficulty. But much goes into private pockets too.

For a few days, these dramas capture the public imagination. Headline writers and cartoonists have a field day. Editors write earnest pieces about the need for change. Even prime ministers mutter about “police reform”. But then public attention passes on to some new excitement. In the background some deals are done. A few people are transferred, none punished. The curtain comes down on the drama, almost unnoticed.

Chang Noi has a feeling that things have been getting worse – since the crisis, and since the advent of the Thaksin government. The illegal economy has swollen, and the pay-offs too. The police know Thaksin is “one of them”. He relies on them so much for his campaigns against drugs, influence, and NGO protesters. And, as a senior figure wondered aloud at one of the conferences which are also a standard part of the genre, if we challenge the police “will we be safe”.

Chuwit’s dramatic talents have made this one of the most entertaining re-runs of this old drama. But will it change anything? Or has Chuwit just helped Thaksin kick the pork into the dog’s mouth? Still he deserves a Mekhala Award, a Golden Globe, an Oscar!